![Bernhard Heisig 2008 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Bernhard_Heisig_2008_2.jpg)
Bernhard Heisig (31 March 1925 – 10 June 2011) was a German
painter
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...
and graphic artist. Long-time director of the Leipzig Academy (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst; 1961–64, 1976–87) and a leading figure in East Germany's
Leipzig School, which included
Wolfgang Mattheuer
Wolfgang Mattheuer (7 April 1927—7 April 2004) was a German painter, graphic artist and sculptor. Together with Werner Tübke and Bernhard Heisig he was a leading representative of the Leipzig School, a figurative art current in East Germany. ...
and
Werner Tübke
Werner Tübke (30 July 1929 in Schönebeck, Germany – 27 May 2004 in Leipzig, Germany) was a German painter, best known for his monumental '' Peasants' War Panorama'' located in Bad Frankenhausen
Bad Frankenhausen (officially: Bad Frankenhaus ...
, he painted in the tradition of
Max Beckmann
Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920 ...
,
Otto Dix
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with Geor ...
, and
Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980) was an Austrian artist, poet, playwright, and teacher best known for his intense Expressionism, expressionistic portraits and landscapes, as well as his theories on vision that influenced the ...
. His experiences from
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
on both the western and eastern fronts were a recurring subject in his art beginning in the late 1960s, and it is for these works that he is best known in the West. Highly regarded on both sides of the Berlin Wall in the 1980s, he was at the center of controversy after German unification when his painting ''Time and Life'' was selected to hang in the German parliament. The painting is a panorama of German history and hangs in the cafeteria on the first floor of the
Reichstag building
The Reichstag (, ; officially: – ; en, Parliament) is a historic government building in Berlin which houses the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany's parliament.
It was constructed to house the Imperial Diet (german: Reichstag) of the ...
.
The controversy was part of the larger German-German ''Bilderstreit'' (image battle) over what role East German art and artists should be allowed to play in the new Germany.
References
Further reading
* April Eisman, ''Bernhard Heisig and the Fight for Modern Art in East Germany'' (Camden House, 2018). .
* April Eisman, "Denying Difference in the Post-Socialist Other: Bernhard Heisig and the Changing Reception of an East German Artist." ''Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture,'' no. 2 (2012): 45-73
PDF.
* Renate Hartleb, ''Bernhard Heisig'' (Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1975).
* Karl Max Kober, ''Bernhard Heisig'' (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1981).
* Jörn Merkert & Peter Pachnicke, ''Bernhard Heisig: Retrospektive'' (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1989).
* Dietulf Sander, ''Bernhard Heisig als Buchillustrator'' (Leipzig: Faber & Faber, 2007).
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heisig, Bernhard
1925 births
2011 deaths
Artists from Wrocław
People from the Province of Lower Silesia
Socialist Unity Party of Germany members
20th-century German painters
20th-century German male artists
21st-century German painters
21st-century German male artists
German contemporary artists
German male painters
Recipients of the National Prize of East Germany
Recipients of the Patriotic Order of Merit (honor clasp)
Academic staff of the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig